US book retailer Barnes & Noble will become the latest Internet bookseller to leap onto the IPO bandwagon when it floats its Barnesandnoble.com subsidiary. According to the company's SEC filing, Barnes & Noble will retain 80 per cent of the online retailer's stock. Given the inflated valuations Wall Street is giving to Internet-based operations, such as Amazon.com. Amazon has a long way to go before it makes a profit, yet its stock has been talked up on the expectation of major returns in the future. Clearly Barnes & Noble wants a cut, and reckons it can make a pile on by selling just 20 per cent of the company. As Mark Mooradian, an analyst at market researcher Jupiter Communictations, pointed out, the formation of Barnesandnoble.com as a division within Barnes & Noble did not overly improve the parent's stock value. ® Click for more stories